The recently launched 2030 innovative climate footprint calculator, will help consumers, manufacturers and brands alike understand the climate impact of consumer goods.
The development of this application was led by the Swedish Fin-Tech Doconomy as part of a wider partnership with UN Climate Change to increase awareness among stakeholders of the climate impact of their actions.
The 2030 Calculator gathers data from a wide range of databases to provide users with the estimated climate footprint of their purchases. The tool can thereby help companies and brands take responsible decisions with regard to the sustainability of their products, including within their supply chains, and can increase consumer awareness of the consequences of their purchases, hopefully fostering behavioural changes.
The calculator is also linked to the UN Carbon Offset Platform, enabling the application users to take immediate climate action by contributing to green projects that are vetted by the United Nations and that work towards achieving the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
“I am happy to see that climate considerations remain at the heart of innovation, and it gives me faith that the world can still win this fight,” said Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change.
The calculator is launched in its beta version, focusing initially on clothing retailers and manufacturers, but will soon be expanded to include other categories of products, such as electronics, furniture and food. This tool has the potential to rapidly increase familiarity with the climate footprint of goods, as it considers the emissions associated with all known elements of the supply chain (raw material, manufacturing processes, transport, etc) to estimate a cradle-to-customer Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) footprint, the results of which can be obtained within minutes, as opposed to several weeks with the current regular LCA.
The 2030 Calculator is not a substitute for a complete LCA, but an excellent approximation for those that are getting started in the process or may not have the resources to perform a full LCA.
The ambition of the partnership between Doconomy and the UN Climate Change secretariat is to have a set of robust, transparent calculators that can be used free of charge by all stakeholders globally to estimate the footprint of individuals, organizations, events and products that can foster climate action in support of the Paris Agreement’s goals.
